David Meischen's Blog, page 4

Impossible Masquerade

When you sit down to write a poem, you don’t have to be you. When you dive into a new collection of poems—say Sandra Yannone’s The Glass Studio—the excitement of a masquerade awaits, the poet inhabiting various masks, various aspects of herself as you move from poem to poem. Behind the mask, glimmers of something vital that each page has to offer.

Recently, I had the privilege of experiencing Sandra Yannone’s poetry in person, of listening rapt as she read from The Glass Studio, including a poem that turned my understanding of poetic masks upside down: “David Cassidy Writes Me a Fan Letter from the Great Painted Bus Beyond.” I know about letter poems. I know that often these poems take liberties—that a letter poem can address Kahlil Gibran, Josef Stalin, Anna Karenina, Joan of Arc—the possibilities are endless. But I’d not encountered a poem that achieves a double impossibility—a famous person no longer breathing writes to the author of the poem—until Sandy imagined David Cassidy writing to her teenage self.

Thanks for reading Narrative Surprise! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This remarkable poem surprises in two ways. David Cassidy and Sandy’s much younger self come to life on the page. Here’s a lovely moment in Cassidy’s voice:

I was hoping to be a firefly that feasted
on night flowers, leaving my scent behind
with my original songs, the ones no one heard
over the din of those pop hits that ABC’s money
moguls shoveled into my mouth.

And Cassidy’s insight into Sandy’s teen self:

       I know you gave
a private concert to Tara Hardy
in your living room, that you have two microphones
at the ready . . . when you feel inspired
by songs you wore down the needles
. . . to hear over and over.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
       You know you are happier
when you are unlocked, unleashed . . .

Cassidy—the David he wants to be—as a firefly dipping to night flowers! Sandy, letting Cassidy reveal something about herself that shines brighter in his voice.

I’ve been so taken with “David Cassidy Writes Me a Fan Letter from the Great Painted Bus Beyond” that I’ve tried the double masquerade myself. Here’s the opening of my first attempt:

“Dr. Kildare Writes to a Texas Farmboy”

I pulled your chart so many times. Nights
after a shift, after the klieg lights went dark,

I made notes toward a diagnosis: reflexive
grinning syndrome. hyperactivity in the glands

that regulate optimism. You were watching me
in black and white—the TV screen, my doctor show

reflected back at you, who couldn’t know
that I was looking through a one-way mirror.

As an avid reader—and writer—of poetry, nothing makes me happier than a poem that takes me elsewhere. Thanks, Sandra Yannone!

My Question for You, Dear Reader/Writer:

Which character from bygone television (or movies) is writing to a younger version of you? What unique insights does this character offer into your former self?

Note:

I recommend two collections by Sandra Yannone:

The Glass Studio (Salmon Poetry, 2024).

Boats for Women (Salmon Poetry, 2019)

Thanks for reading Narrative Surprise! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

The Hurstwood Moment

“They were doing the dishes, his wife washing while he dried.”

Thus open’s “Say Yes,” a very short story by Tobias Wolff. The situation here is the epitome of ordinary—humdrum marriage, humdrum evening chore. Reading the short opening paragraph, one might be forgiven for expecting a flat story. What could possibly lift this narrative out of its domestic rut?

Thanks for reading Narrative Surprise! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Our answer comes in the second paragraph, though subtly, when the couple happens upon the subject of interracial marriage, and the husband “said that all things considered, he thought it was a bad idea.” Notice the qualifier here—all things considered. Notice, too, that the husband doesn’t plant a flag. He merely thought the idea was bad. This feels like potentially “safe” domestic territory. But twice in three short paragraphs, the wife asks why. Her facial expression—pinched brows, bitten lower lip—tells the husband “he should keep his mouth shut, but he never did.”

The wife continues with her questions; the husband becomes increasingly defensive. The wife reaches abruptly into the dishwater and cuts her hand on something beneath the surface. The husband springs into action, helps her with a bandage, and that might have been the end of it, the discussion shelved. But then the wife makes the story’s one bear-trap statement­: “So, you wouldn’t have married me if I’d been black.” A page of back-and-forth dialogue ensues, during which the husband tries to avoid the trap he has helped to set for himself. Until the wife insists: “No more considering. Yes or no.” And despite the author’s plea in the story’s title, the husband says, “Jesus, Ann. All right. No.”

In the space of three pages, a marriage has been shaken to its very foundation.

“Say Yes” continues for a little more than a page. The husband promises the wife he’ll make it up to her, and she asks, “How?” At this point, she’s in bed already; the house is dark. Wolff, masterful throughout, leaves us with a wonderfully ambiguous closing moment.

What brings me back to “Say Yes” is that moment in the conversation—as in so many moments in our lives—when a word is spoken that changes everything. And that word cannot be taken back.

I like to think of it as a Hurstwood moment, after the character in Dreiser’s Sister Carrie who is on the verge of returning $10,000 in cash that is not his to the safe where it belongs . . . when the safe door clicks shut. There is no going back from such a moment. Great literature, great stories, return to them. Over and over.

As Lady Macbeth says, when all is lost: “What’s done cannot be undone.”

Notes:

“Say Yes” is available in Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories (Gibbs Smith, Publisher; 10th ptg. edition, July 30, 2013). Highly recommended. If you’re an avid reader, I think you’ll want to keep it near at hand—for re-reading. If you’re a writer, my challenge is this: Write a very short story that hinges on a Hurstwood moment. I’ll share one of mine in the coming weeks. (I found a PDF of “Say Yes” online—not sure if the entity that posted it had permission.)

I read Sister Carrie as an undergraduate, again as a first-year teacher, and a third time in the eighties—long enough ago that I don’t want to vouch for my taste at the time. Numerous critics have observed that Dreiser’s writing is clunky, but for me, Sister Carrie was an engrossing character study.

Until next week,

David Meischen
Nopalito, Texas: Stories
Caliche Road Poems
Anyone’s Son: Poems
meischenink.com

Thanks for reading Narrative Surprise! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Desert Surprise: Abandoned Hide-a-Bed

On a spring morning in 2015, I stepped between the strands of a fence along Albuquerque’s West Mesa and descended a curving, rubbled path available only to trail bikes and pedestrians. Though ranching vehicles of some kind had clearly worn the double tread where I walked, the wild was reclaiming this part of the desert. But then something neither flora nor fauna flagged my peripheral vision. I stepped around brittle scrub blocking my view and gaped at the apparition of a weather-worn, rusted-out hide-a-bed splayed open in the sand.

This part of the mesa along the city’s western edge bears many such dispiriting discards—mattresses, washing machines, ancient television sets. But the derelict sofa had been there so long it looked almost at home among the chamisa. I took photographs. I mused over how the sofa got there, how long it had been moldering. One day it was gone—extracted, I assume, by a four-wheeler crew from the city department that maintains our open spaces.

Thanks for reading Narrative Surprise! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

As a writer, I’ve spent much of the past quarter-century musing over the notion of surprise. I’m a born story-teller; narrative is my default mode. But stories need surprise to jolt them out of whatever narrative rut we writers are apt to follow.

As I was working on poems for my first poetry collection, my desk succumbed to clutter. And clutter can have its uses, as I discovered one afternoon when the official report from a high-contrast heart scan surfaced. Thanks to the poet Kevin Prufer’s achievements in “braided narrative,” my brain juxtaposed two images—ragged arteries, ragged sofa. And I was off. Here are the opening lines of “Tomography, with Quantitative Evaluation of Coronary Calcium” (yes, I stole the title—from my heart scan report):

­­­­­­­­­­­--------------------------------------------------

I pause beside a sofa bed splayed

over rock-strewn sand along the mesa trail.

   A coyote trots through the brush beyond, heedless of me,

     my distractions, my specialist’s report.

   Calcified plaque (large) noted in the proximal portion of the vessel

                      resulting in mild stenosis.

The fabric is in tatters, foam dingy with rainfall and sun,

batting still fluffy along the edges

               like a lamb ripped open

               on a summer morning years ago.

           Predator shall lie down with prey—

­­­­­­­­­­­--------------------------------------------------

So: the narrative moves from sofa bed to coyote to heart scan, then back to the sofa bed, then flashes to a quick memory of farm life, followed by a biblical reference. To the extent this poem succeeds, I credit surprise.

These are my opening thoughts for Narrative Surprise, a blog that will focus on poetry, fiction, and memoir. How do writers employ narrative to lure us in? How do they unsettle narrative so as to show us something fresh, unusual, surprising?

Notes:

·         I discovered Kevin Prufer’s approach in “Braided Narrative,” his contribution to Wingbeats II: Exercises and Practice in Poetry. I had the honor of serving as co-editor.

·         Highly recommended: Kevin Prufer’s The Fears (Copper Canyon, 2023). The braiding on display in these poems is masterful.

·         My poem with sofa bed appears in full in Anyone’s Son, from 3:A Taos Press. I highly recommend browsing there.

Thanks for reading Narrative Surprise! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Coming Soon:

This is Narrative Surprise.

Subscribe now